‘I … I wonder where the others …’ I couldn’t bring myself to say any more. The words sounded absurd even as I said them, and he was paying them no attention anyway.
He pushed open a door on the hallway and pulled me in after him, and I had the sense of a larger room, mirrors glinting in the semi-darkness, the white expanse of a bed. The moon shone in through a veiled window.
He kissed me then, and he tasted of champagne. His hands were everywhere, stripping the purple dress from me, his lips on mine, on my throat, on my suddenly, shockingly, naked breasts, which he clasped in his hands, and I attempted, half-heartedly, to resist these caresses, more out of a thwarted desire not to appear slutty than any genuine wish that he should stop.
I definitely didn’t want him to stop. This was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. He wanted me, and he was beautiful and famous and older and so knowledgeable, and I was desperate, absolutely desperate, to be wanted by someone. Anyone.
Don’t misunderstand me. I wasn’t stupid enough to think this was true love, or at least I didn’t then. I grew stupider over time. Mostly I was just enthralled, enchanted, and thrilled. My life was actually beginning, at last.
And in a big, big way.
He told me not to be scared, and I wasn’t, not really, at least until he took the condom out of the drawer in the bedside table. He bore me down on to the bed and I realized that this was It, as the girls said in school in hushed voices. I squeezed my thighs together anxiously until he teased them apart with deft fingers and soft words. My hands were pressed against that perfect skin and it was smooth and warm; his mouth was on mine and he was crushing me, pushing into me, and it hurt in a vague way, like an afterthought. But more than anything it was unbearably exciting, just to be wanted, just to be desired, and I yielded completely to him, because in those days, yielding was the one thing I knew how to do.
* * *
‘I feel rough,’ said Piers. He looked pale and smelled vaguely of spirits.
‘Good,’ said Rosie, her lipstick gone, her lips visibly cracked, even in the low light of the Bentley. ‘You deserve to.’
I was sitting between them in the back seat. Something had gone on between them, some boundary had been breached. I should be paying attention, but it was impossible to gather my wandering thoughts.
Every time I shut my eyes I saw things – myself shamelessly splayed on the bed under Aaron’s gaze, or the thick purplish rod of his erection as he urged me to take it into my mouth – flashes of my evening, as sharp and clear as photographs, filling me with an odd mixture of tearful mortification and yearning.
‘Where did you vanish off to?’ asked Rosie, and it took me a second to work out that this question was for me.
‘Nowhere much,’ I said. ‘Lucy took me into the conservatory. Aaron was there with this other girl, Penelope.’
‘Another one of his harem, then?’ sneered Rosie. ‘What did you get up to?’
I blushed hard, though it was hidden in the dark womb of the car. ‘We just chatted, really.’
‘Oh yeah? And what’s the great Aaron got to say for himself?’
‘I dunno … just chit-chat. He keeps lots of guns. They were going to shoot clay pigeons at his house.’
And he told me I was beautiful and a gift. That I was a seeker after truth. That together we would do great things …
‘I don’t approve of people who are into guns,’ said Rosie.
‘You don’t approve of anyone,’ snapped Piers with unexpected bitterness.
I threw him a sharp glance, but he was already rolling down the car window and shouting to the driver, ‘Mate, mate, stop the car, stop the car, I think I’m going to be sick.’
* * *
I woke up the next morning sore all over, my head pounding, and hurried down to the mail room to see if Aaron had left a message.
There was nothing.
There was nothing at lunch either.
The purgatorial silence went on and on. I told no one what had happened. Piers asked me if something was wrong, Rosie did not.
And then, four days later, long after I had given up hope and almost come to terms with the way I had been picked up and dropped, another note appeared in my pigeonhole.
Nina,
Aaron wants to see you again – this time you’re going to stay for the weekend with us at the house. The car will come by to pick you up at seven tomorrow morning.
Sorry, but there’s only room for you – your friends will have to do without you this time.
Love and blessings,
Lucy XXX
Chapter Eight
Let me tell you, Sophia – it’s a long way to Kent from Cambridge, especially when you’re in a frenzy of nerves and erotic anticipation. I sat in the back of the Bentley, staring out of the windows, trying to look like the sort of girl that was regularly chauffeured from place to place.
I had packed two bags – one of clothes, my small collection of Body Shop toiletries, a brand-new underwear set consisting of bra, French knickers, suspenders and stockings in electric blue (dear God, what was it about the Eighties and stockings and suspenders?), at least three pairs of shoes – and the other containing my textbooks, notepads and a novel. I was reading two or three books a week at the time. This one might have been Beloved by Toni Morrison.
When I’d been collected at the college gates at seven in the morning, these bags had been swiftly put in the boot of the car. The impeccably suited chauffeur had slammed it shut with such decisive force that I hadn’t dared ask for the novel, or the pink bubblegum lipgloss I’d packed for the occasion.
Instead I’d clambered into the back seat and regarded the closely cropped rear of his head beneath his peaked cap as he started up the car.
‘Excuse me?’ I worked up the courage to ask eventually.
‘Yes?’
‘How long will it take to get there?’
‘Two and a half hours.’
‘Oh, that’s quite far, isn’t it?’ I chirped, more for the sake of conversation than any other reason.
He didn’t reply, not even giving me a backward glance in the mirror as he’d pulled out on to Trinity Street, the car purring over the cobbles.
I decided to try again.
‘So, do you know Aaron Kessler well, then?’
‘Who?’
A little dart of alarm shot through me.
‘Aaron Kessler.’
‘No. I don’t.’
There was something in the way this was delivered; perfectly polite, but with a final, almost hostile edge, that put paid to the conversation.
Through the window, the ornate college buildings gave way to the villages on the outskirts of Cambridge, then there was nothing but flat plains filled with crops and the occasional lone garage on the winding country roads.
Now I had nothing to distract my attention away from the forthcoming enigma that was Aaron Kessler.
I crossed my legs, wondering if my flimsy hippy skirt with tiny bells sewed to the ends of the belt-string had been the right choice. Maybe it was all too flower child. Perhaps I should have worn jeans and the bright geometric jumper I’d bought for the trip, or perhaps even the purple dress I’d worn to the party, though now, of course, he’d seen me in it. And out of it.
Perhaps I should have told the others where I was going.
This last was troubling me most of all. I’d thought about it for days, but ultimately, I hadn’t wanted to tell them to their faces that they weren’t invited.
And I’d been frightened that they might talk me out of it.
I sighed and tried to relax, enjoy the admiring glances the car engendered in motorists passing in the other direction. None of this was a big deal. I’d just ask Aaron if I could give them a quick call when I arrived, and then I’d ask Rosie to keep an eye on my pigeonhole.
They couldn’t persuade me not to come if I was already here.
* * *
There was nearly two hours of motorway, duri
ng which I sat, silent, in the back of the car. Then forty-five minutes of twisting, plunging roads lined with thickets of yellow-gold and copper trees standing knee-deep in fallen leaves. The sky was a perfect cotton blue.
We passed what seemed like miles of impossibly high yew hedge, and then a red brick wall at least ten feet tall with triangular coping stones. This ended in a tiny entrance with a high gate made of wood and cast iron. On the wall next to it was fixed a slate plaque, and carved on it was a single word: MORNINGSTAR.
The driver reached out, pressed buttons on a metal box mounted on a pole near the drive, and the wood and iron gate swung wide to admit us.
On the other side was Morningstar, appearing like a mirage, its crenelated roof poking up over the sweep of poplar trees. It was not so much a house as a castle, or rather a fortified manor – small, but perfectly formed, with high walls and leaded windows and, at the top, a square turreted tower with a flag flying from it.
I gasped and raised my hands to my mouth.
‘Oh, it’s gorgeous! Like a fairy tale!’
The driver didn’t reply, but did a peculiar thing with his shoulders, a sort of not-shrug, as the gate slowly closed behind us.
That little pang of confusion, not quite discomfort, again rose within me, like a jarring note in some music. At the time, his responses on the journey mystified me, but looking back, I can see that he was operating under the twin engines of pity and contempt for me. This was a little more advanced than my emotional register was capable of understanding at the time.
Had I but known it, I would soon be expanding this register in a variety of new ways.
As the car crunched down a winding gravelled path, I caught details – an orchard full of drooping trees, the fruit long gone, interspersed with the white rectangles of beehives; a perfectly flat, still stream with gliding ducks upon it, and, as we grew near, the front door was under an archway with a real portcullis and narrow moat.
Whatever I had imagined, it was not this.
And soon, soon, I would be in Aaron’s arms again. The thought paralysed me with nervousness and desire. My heart fluttered under my silky blouse, another new purchase.
‘Nina!’ Lucy emerged on to the drawbridge, barefoot and seemingly oblivious of the autumn chill. Her toenails were painted scarlet, like her lips, and she was in a long black shift, her only other clothing a heavy gold chain with the amulet on the end.
I waved through the car window as it pulled to a stop, and she was running up to the door, pulling it open to let me out, throwing her arms around me. ‘You came! Oh, it’s going to be great!’
I returned the embrace, overwhelmed and touched by this enthusiasm – Lucy barely knew me. I was confused, but then I thought, Yes, some people are more demonstrative than others, more impulsively friendly than I am. You could stand to be more like her, in fact. A thousand small fears that had grown with me in the back of the car as I sat with the silent driver were dismissed and dissipated into the cool mid-morning.
‘Come on, come in, we’re waiting. Well,’ chattered Lucy, ‘I say we. We won’t see Aaron for a couple of hours yet. But that will give you time to meet everyone else. Have you got bags … Oh, he’s got your bags. He’ll put them in the Blue Room. Do you need to change?’
‘I …’
‘Oh, you don’t need to change, you look so great, but you can if you want to.’ Lucy threw her arms around me again and kissed my cheek; and once more I subdued the voice that suggested this was strange. ‘Oh, it’s so good to see you! We’re going to have so much fun! It’s going to be amazing.’
I was drawn after Lucy into a small cobbled courtyard, enclosed on all sides by the house. In the centre an astrolabe glinted in brass. I was being led through a big wooden door. I had a sense of dark carved panels, tables covered in antiques, an old-fashioned cream telephone with a brass rod for a receiver and Bakelite mouth- and ear-piece to speak and listen into.
We emerged into a hall with a spiral staircase leading upwards in one corner. Lucy went left but I dawdled behind, my breath taken away by the sheer scale of the building, with its wooden and plaster ceilings, dusty portraits and wide windows admitting pale autumn light. It was a vision of unparalleled luxury and privilege, of baronial splendour.
Lucy tugged me forward out of my reverie, into a high room papered in green flowers and containing a long billiard table.
Two men – boys, really – were playing at the table, and both stopped what they were doing to raise their heads and peer at me.
Lucy took both of my hands, and then, to my surprise, twirled me around, as though displaying me, as if I were a prize. There was something troubling about this, something … objectifying about it, and within me, something bridled.
‘Nina, this is Tristan, and this other one is our Wolf.’ She came forward, running an almost possessive hand over the back of the smaller, swarthier of the two men. ‘He may look scary but his bark is worse than his bite …’
‘Speak for yourself.’ Wolf had blue eyes that gleamed quickly at me before looking away. He was dressed in jeans and a checked shirt and nodded brusquely.
‘Tristan, Wolf, this is Nina,’ she said.
Tristan was taller and heroically blonde, like a Nordic prince, with wavy hair and high cheekbones naturally tinted pink, as though he spent a lot of time outdoors indulging in wholesome sports.
‘Nina,’ he said, and took my hand while I blushed. ‘Lovely to meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘Oh!’ I said, unable to reply, because I’d had no idea that either of them existed until this moment. ‘Are you here for the weekend too, then?’
‘We live here.’ It was Wolf that spoke. He had a flat, northern accent, and his hand curled around a bottle of lager.
‘We all live here,’ said Lucy, taking Tristan’s hand.
Tristan grinned. ‘It’s so great that you’ll be joining us, it really is …’
I blinked, confused by the strange turn of phrase. I was already here, wasn’t I?
‘C’mon Nina, you still have to meet Peter and Tess,’ said Lucy loudly, cutting him off and dropping his hand. ‘So much to see and do! Come on!’
‘Peter’s gone,’ remarked Wolf, as though to himself, bending low over the billiard table again. ‘Left this morning.’
‘Will he be back tonight?’ asked Lucy, raising an eyebrow. ‘Did he say?’
Wolf shrugged. ‘Doubt it. Think he went back to London.’
‘Never mind,’ said Lucy, sharing a look with Tristan. ‘Perhaps that’s for the best.’
I allowed myself to be led away, my confusion smothering me. ‘You know, Lucy,’ I said as we passed the great staircase once more, ‘I thought it was only for the weekend … I’ve only brought a few clothes and I have college—’
‘Oh, don’t be silly! He didn’t mean you were moving in. Silly Tristan, got his wires crossed – he does that.’ She waggled her eyebrows at me. ‘No, you’ve got college on Monday, we know, we’ll get you back. Though you will be busy this weekend – never a dull moment here!’
‘Don’t you have to get back to Cambridge on Monday?’ I asked, once again surprised. ‘I thought you were—’
‘Penelope!’ shouted Lucy up the stairs suddenly, ‘Nina’s here! Come on down and say hello!’
There was silence.
‘Ah, let’s go look for her.’ Lucy bounded up the steps, and once again I sensed that an awkward line of inquiry had been blocked.
* * *
We emerged on to a landing underneath a large porthole window, and I blinked happily in the sunlight and warmth that slanted through it while Lucy shouted up to Penelope a few more times.
‘I was sure she was up here … Ah, there’s Tess!’
I turned. Emerging on to the stairs was a girl, sleepy-eyed and clad in a pink silk dressing gown, her small feet bare. She seemed very young to me, little more than a child, especially as she rubbed her huge blue eyes with her hand, and her thick honey-coloured hair was
messy and disordered.
‘Tess! This is Nina.’
Tess smiled, holding a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn. ‘Hello, Nina. We’ve heard all about you. We’re all very excited …’
‘Now now! No giving away any surprises!’ Lucy reached out and gently slapped at Tess’s hand. I eyed them both, unsettled. ‘So, if you’re up,’ Lucy continued to Tess, ‘I guess Aaron soon will be?’
‘I think so, he’s in the shower.’ Tess yawned again.
As she said this, I had a sudden, horrid suspicion that this girl had come from his bed.
And once this suspicion entered my head, it latched on to my thoughts like a leech. What was going on here?
You’re being paranoid, that’s what’s going on here, I told myself.
Lucy slipped her arm through mine. ‘All right,’ she said to Tess, ‘We’ll leave you to it and see you downstairs. Wolf said Peter left this morning?’
‘I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to him since last night.’ Tess looked over her shoulder down the corridor, and though I had no real evidence for this, I sensed that the question made her uneasy.
They were hiding it as well as they could, but nobody seemed very fond of this Peter.
‘Never mind. He’ll be back soon enough, I’m sure.’ I was tugged again, this time down the stairs once more. ‘Come on!’
* * *
Aaron appeared at some point after noon, clad in a loose pair of trousers and a white linen shirt.
I was sitting in the billiard room with the others, engaged in idle chat around cups of herbal tea and cigarettes, though Wolf smoked spliffs, one after the other, so that his small eyes were permanently pink.
Though I asked them questions – where had they come from? What did they do for a living? – and they gave friendly enough answers, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being vague and evasive. The most I could find out was that Wolf had first met Aaron somewhere in South East Asia, though I couldn’t pin down where.
Their elusiveness troubled me.
But Aaron’s arrival changed everything. First, there was the sound of a door opening upstairs, and the energy in the room transformed. I realized that I wasn’t the only one who had been desperate to see him. The others were the same, their upturned faces moving towards him like sunflowers in a field, following the sun’s light in unison as the stairs creaked beneath his footsteps. Tess fiddled with her thick dark gold hair, Lucy sucked in her already flat stomach, and cool, willowy Penelope, who had just joined us, bit her pale lips to redden them. Even Tristan seemed to bridle with excitement.
Everything Is Lies Page 10